#midira

For one thing, while there are plenty of stellar drummers who focus on just providing a propelling backbeat, here as the stormy Nalepa builds to a head over its first half it’s more like Martínez is following the ebb and flow of Buckareff and Baker, even when (as on the opening sequence of “Funkspiel I”) she locks into a pattern. When Martínez snaps into a more conventionally propulsive groove at the beginning of “Funkspiel III” it’s quickly swamped by glowering waves of noise and the contrast is bracing. In the slightly more abstract (but still frequently pulverizing) second half, the trio’s interplay continues to ground what could have gotten a bit too abstract for its own good in an almost audible people-playing-in-a-room dynamic (this was one live studio session, and what a room). When “Funkspiel VI” suddenly stops it’s with the satisfaction of wrestling a challenge to its conclusion, a finish line being crossed.

Nalepa by Aidan Baker

Weeks later, Baker went back to the Funkhaus solo and tried his own hand at the drums. Baker’s Nalepa (released on CD with the LP of the other Nalepa, or available separately in digital form) takes a portion of øjeRum’s cover for the Nadja version and shares a live studio session methodology with its bigger sibling. Here, though, Baker plays everything, in this case live drums over his own looped guitar and bass playing. The four-part, 42-minute “Radioplay” found here never locks into the effortful, muscular climaxes that the Nadja record does, but at its best, like the seething bad dream vibe of “Radioplay III,” it finds its own potent frequency.  

Nadja continue to move forward, with another record out soon that puts another entirely new spin on their sound. Over their long and varied career it can be hard to tell (even in hindsight!) which investigations and developments are momentary offshoots and which will continue to bear fruit. If both Nalepas wind up being the former, they’re still worthy diversions. But everything here, especially the power trio version of Nadja that kicks up the dust on their version of Nalepa, is compelling enough it’s hard not to hope they follow up on it.